Has Julius Randle leapfrogged Marcus Smart yet?
Another classic example of good stats on a bad team guy. 18 and 7 on 9-11 shooting, yet he's a -8 in +/-. He'll leapfrog Marcus when he starts making regular positive impacts on the game.
To be fair, that's what I thought about Clarkson, and here he is, making all the winning plays in this game.
Also, at some point, you have to figure that that argument doesn't always work. Those are good numbers, against actual NBA players.
Well, also look at who they're playing - the Rockets, who will most likely be a bottom defensive team of the league. But this has been the problem with Randle the entire time. He'd always put up decent to good offensive numbers, but his defense was atrocious and he didn't really help his team at all. He's also kind of a black hole when he gets the ball being overly ball-dominant and single-minded. He had 6 assists tonight, but he generally kills the ball movement by making ill-advised decisions. His ball-dominance also leads to increased turnovers, too.
I just think he's long been overrated. I honestly don't think he's going to be that much better than Brandon Bass overall. He'll be a bit better offensively and possibly on the boards, but he doesn't have the defensive versatility or skills that Bass had.
I've had Lakers fans tell me that Walton wants to use Randle as their version of Draymond (a passing big who can also score and rebound), so the 6 assists seems to go along with that. It'll be interesting to see whether Walton can hide their weaknesses efficiently.
What's your thoughts on Clarkson? I hate that he always gets compared to Smart since they were in the same draft class, and Lakers fans calling him much better than Smart and yadda yadda yadda whatever else they say.
I don't think Randle has the mentality that Draymond has. Draymond actually LIKES to distribute the ball, where I don't see that at all with Randle. And we're not even going to begin to compare them defensively lol
Clarkson is a bit different. I can see the argument that he's better than Smart, because offense is more prominently noticed than defense in the NBA, which he's been pretty good at. But I take the two-way Smart over the one-way Clark every day. I also think Clarkson is about as good as he's going to get, whereas I think Smart's ceiling is still ways away (whether or not he'll ever reach it is the ultimate question). If Smart could just get that shot down to be more consistent at an average level, he has all of the tools to be a two-way star in this league in the mold of someone like Lowry, though less of a shooter with a more well-rounded passing offensive game, along with his otherworldly defense.
Good points all around.
Sorry I'm asking so much, it's just that, I'm so subconscious of whether the Lakers are building their team better than us, that I want more opinions from Celtics fans. Everyone in LA loves their Lakers, and rightfully so, but they aren't ever open to discuss player weaknesses or discuss the Celtics rebuild. And of course, it sucks when friends who are Lakers fans come up to you and boast about "the future warriors" and "KD 2.0 and steph 2.0" and "young core" this and "young core" that. Kinda gets old after awhile. So yeah, thanks, good discussion. Here's a TP, btw.
TP back at ya.
I don't know what's worse - having to converse basketball with Lakers fans or not having anyone to converse basketball with at all lol I've lived near either St. Louis or Pittsburgh my entire life, which are both huge sports cities that don't have basketball. I'm not really a fan of any other sport, and with no real NBA team around, most people from those areas don't watch the NBA.
But I did watch the 2010 NBA Finals Game 7 with 2 Lakers fans. Wasn't a great experience for me lol
EDIT: Actually, I take that back. I do have some friends that are NBA fans, but they're Lebron James lovers. You know, the type that are die-hard Cavs fans to die-hard Heat fans back to die-hard Cavs fans. They get pretty annoying.